


The years that passed - a damijon fic

by gmartinez12



Category: Super Sons (Comics)
Genre: Future AU, Just two boys who dont know how love works, M/M, This is...really angsty lol, time to break some hearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23150902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gmartinez12/pseuds/gmartinez12
Summary: The Super Sons were a dynamic duo, with two of the most prolific kid heroes of their generation, Jon Kent and Damian Wayne.But that was in the past.Years after the Super Sons disbanded and went their separate ways, Jon gets a call from Damian. Try as he might, he couldn’t put everything in the past, especially since the last time Jon saw Damian...was the last time they were on speaking terms.
Relationships: Jonathan Kent/Damian Wayne
Comments: 15
Kudos: 90





	The years that passed - a damijon fic

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, hope you enjoy this little angsty fic I made before. 
> 
> Thanks for reading my fics!!! I really love talking to you guys and meeting new damijon/jondami fans, so if you want to know more about me and my work, and talk and stuff, I have a twitter over here!
> 
> https://twitter.com/DSupersons (sfw)  
> https://twitter.com/SonsR18 (nsfw)
> 
> Come and say hi! I post fic updates there and I do comic edits too!
> 
> Also, if you discord, mine is gmartinez12#9930 :D

****

**The Years that Passed - a Damijon fic**

by gmartinez

“Damian…” Jon breathed in surprise. He was staring at his phone with half-lidded eyes, the caller ID still with that matching picture of his erstwhile partner when he was still a boyish 13. Jon hadn’t thought to change it over the years until it became pointless because he never expected to hear from him again.

Jon hesitated for a few seconds more before he took the call. He sighed deeply as the crisp, straightforward voice of Damian Wayne hit his ears once more.

“J, the Super Sons need to get back into gear. We have a mission.”

_There’s something I never thought I’d hear again_ , Jon mused in his head. True, they were still the sons of super heroes, but the name they’d taken to using when they were still partners sounded almost too silly, too childish, now that Jon was a freshman in college. It was silly just like how Jon had been silly in his youth, and just as silly as the fact that Damian, of all people, would be calling him out of the blue.

“It’s Jon,” Jon replied stiffly. “And I have midterms tomorrow, Damian. I don’t really have time for…whatever this is.” Jon tried his best not to sound cold. He almost succeeded, and he could almost hear Damian pause and flinch.

But just as he’d known, the young man on the other end of the line easily regained his composure. “What, using school as an excuse again? We’re not kids anymore.”

_We’re not partners anymore, either,_ Jon barely managed to stop himself from saying. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t angry at Damian. Not really. He was just tired, and he didn’t think the years apart were enough to ever stop him from being tired.

“I have my priorities, Damian. Get to your point.”

Another pause from Damian. When he replied, it was a little more subdued, as if the smirk was unceremoniously wiped away from his voice.

“It’s the Amazo armor,” Damian said quietly, in an un-Damian like way. “We defeated it when we were kids, and the league has since kept it on lockdown, but apparently it made copies of its programming in Lexcorp’s computers and now it became self-aware and took over one of its manufacturing plants. It’s self-replicating new robot avatars.”

“I take it no one else is available?” Jon asked wearily. He was dreading what he knew was inevitable.

“This was our case, Jon,” Damian insisted. “We’re the ones who have to end it.”

On that at least Jon agreed with him. “Okay. I’ll come.”

“Do you want me to pick you up at your dorm or…?”

“No,” Jon cut him off. “Just send me the address.” The last thing Jon needed was a painfully awkward jet ride with Damian.

Jon took his letter jacket emblazoned with the initials of Metropolis University, and put on his last pair of jeans that were a few inches short above his ankle. He rummaged in his closet to find his old childhood second-hand jacket with a cape—his old uniform. A wave of bittersweet nostalgia hit him with the force of a freight train. It used to be his uniform, but now it was too small. Jon had grown up—and out—of the need to wear the jacket. And if he was honest with himself, it wasn’t just the jacket he grew out of.

* * *

**

Try as he might, Jon couldn’t escape that awkwardness. He’d arrived thirty minutes later at the address Damian had provided, at a medium-sized factory 10 miles from the outskirts of Central City. The few local police available had already cordoned off the perimeter, looking both clueless and helpless at the same time. Beyond the chain-link fence, the factory spewed smoke, and paramedics were rushing back with gurneys carrying survivors. Damian was already there coordinating with the authorities.

Damian was…well, Damian, though older than when Jon had last seen him. Just barely out of his teens, Damian had the physique of an athlete at peak condition. His hair was still spiked up with what Jon assumed was half a tub of wax, and he’d changed his uniform to look less like a traffic light, into something sleeker and cooler. His outfit was carbon-fiber black designed for stealth, with red highlights, and a red cyber-styled bat symbol on the chest that looked like it could glow with the flip of a switch. His cape was a dark reflective gray on the outside and crimson on the inside, and it was draped around him like a roman sagum—a military cape fastened with a clasp on one shoulder.

But besides the new costume, which echoed that of Dick Grayson’s previous renditions of Nightwing, Damian was still the Damian that Jon had known. The Damian he’d loved. The Damian he’d lost. They saw each other and both walked over to greet each other, but stopped before any hands were raised for a handshake. For a brief moment, they were both just boys again, and the starburst-laced memories flashed in their eyes. Then it was gone and the awkwardness settled—a heavy, uncomfortable pall of the years that passed hanging over them like a miasma. 

“Hey,” Jon began shyly.

“Hey,” Damian replied.

Damian had gotten taller over the years, but he was still an inch shy of reaching Jon’s height. It used to be a point of endearing banter between them. Now that they were older though, it seemed like such a petty matter—the mirth and good-natured humor in the fact dried and shriveled up in a corner of the past.

“You have a new costume— it looks good,” Jon said with all the air of a man commenting on the weather for want of something interesting to say.

“And you’re still wearing a jacket,” Damian said.

“It’s a letter jacket now, Damian,” Jon sighed, though his lips twitched into the beginnings of a wistful smile.

“I remember when that letter was an ‘S’,” Damian continued.

Jon’s almost-smile faded. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Damian blinked like something surprisingly unpleasant backed up his throat. Then, as if resigning himself to a grisly fate, he nodded. 

They both casually walked into the factory together. The nearer they got, the louder the whirring and buzzing and clanging of machinery seemed to get. The air smelled of rust, ozone, and diesel. The hairs on the back of Jon’s neck stiffened as he recognized another odor underneath…a metallic greasy bile flavor that he’d only ever smelled in the presence of the Amazo armor, all those years ago.

Jon was just about to open the door when a three-foot-tall black robot with far too many legs burst forth from it, leaping in the direction of Jon’s face while hissing a metallic screech. In a split-second, it was thrown against the wall, impaled by a heavy batarang. It sputtered as sparks flitted from the hole in its thorax.

“I had that,” Jon snapped, his eyes glowing bright red with power.

“I was just covering you,” Damian said. Jon’s super-hearing picked up a distinct hint of melancholy in his tone.

“Sure…” Jon replied hesitantly. The biting retort that he expected from Damian didn’t come. He expected Damian to criticize his slowness, or chide him for getting rusty. He expected Damian to scold him with all the magnanimous condescension his pompousness afforded him. But it never came, and this caught Jon off-guard.

“What’s our win condition here? “ Jon asked as he recovered himself.

“There’s a central terminal that’s probably reinforced and defended at the heart of the factory by those robots,” Damian began as a hologram of the factory’s insides emerged from his gauntlet. “The Amazo programming should have housed itself there while it creates more of these face-huggers.” He gestured to the many-legged black robot that was still impaled in the wall. 

“So, wreck all the alien-looking robots?”

“Yes,” Damian confirmed. “They’ll swarm us and attempt to encase us in metal, so we need to work together and cover each other’s bases. It’ll just be like old times…” he smiled slightly.

“Right…old times,” Jon muttered. Seeing Damian’s smile again tugged at his insides, but not in the way that it had when he was younger. As a young boy, Damian’s smiles gave Jon hope for something indescribably wonderful. As a young man, it reminded Jon of his youthful folly and gave him a sour feeling in his guts, much like bile that precipitated vomit.

They opened the ruined door and stepped inside. Despite his age, Jon had to steady himself and remind himself that adults shouldn’t be freaked out by bugs anymore—even if they looked like black, skittering manifestations of every childhood nightmare he’d ever had. The whole factory was crawling with the same many-legged robot that attacked them. They all sported black jagged metal plates that could be mistaken for a chitinous carapace, giving them a horribly similar appearance to shiny black scorpions. Every movement they made emitted a low creak of metal grinding in on itself, and with the hundreds of robot crawlers that covered the walls, floors, and machinery, the factory hummed and buzzed and chirped like the world’s most horrific menagerie of bird and crickets.

Jon had only a few seconds to appreciate the grotesque scenery before the first crawlers started their attack, springing up to his head in an attempt to do unsavory things to his face. Damian’s coined name of ‘face-huggers’ sounded about right. Jon quickly batted one of them away, while beside him, Damian had sliced another one in two using an extendable segmented sword. They stared at each other and then nodded.

The factory wasn’t very large, all things considered. They would be able to reach the center of the machinery, and the terminal within ten minutes at a leisurely pace. But with the dozens of face-huggers that had begun to assault them with every step they took, it would probably take them a little over an hour at most. Even then, both of them were unfazed. They’ve definitely been through worse. The hum and buzz of metal reached a deafening crescendo as they descended upon Damian and Jon. Then, a new sound punctuated their passage through the factory—the distinct screech and groan of metal being rent, torn, and destroyed.

Jon was starting to get familiar with the routine again. He and Damian had adopted one of their classic stances, where they stood back to back, covering each other’s blind spots, all the while moving forward with a deliberate pace. Jon didn’t bother to count the number of face-huggers he’d had to punch out of the air—all of them were easily dispatched by a single punch. Every now and then he’d sweep the floor with a burst of heat vision to take out ten or twenty at once.

Damian was having a similarly easy time himself. Every swing of his sword was a dead face hugger on the floor, and he even had time to be flashy with his sword strokes. Jon was certain Damian was twirling his sword around just to show off. Jon had always found it cool and impressive when they were kids. But now? It just seemed odd. It dawned on Jon that this whole mission seemed odd, if only because it was so easy. That, and Damian seemed like he was beside himself with glee, flashing Jon a grin every so often. Jon felt like Damian was checking up on him not to see if he was okay, but to make sure that he was having fun as well. Jon grew suspicious.

It felt like no time at all when they’d reached the central terminal. What remained of the crawling face-huggers covered the control board in an eight-foot mass of bulging black spiky metal, not unlike a doomed Spartan phalanx that had resigned itself to dine in hell.

“Would you do the honors?” Damian gestured to the crawlers with a thickly gloved hand.

Jon nodded as his pupils glowed a searing red. Wide beams of blinding red light erupted from his eyes and incinerated the face-huggers, peeling them off the terminal one by one until the control board was finally visible. The layers of black face-huggers had apparently been shielding one of their own, this one a rusty shade of brown and green. A cable that sprouted out of its back was connected to one of the panels, and what passed for the thing’s head glared balefully at the pair of them. It was clearly the Amazo remnant that Damian and Jon had been looking for, and its small body’s gestures gave it the barest hint of recognition that it was about to finally meet its end. It howled an ear-splitting screech that sounded like nails scratching on a blackboard as Damian severed the cable with his sword at the same time as he threw an explosive batarang at the robot. It exploded into a hundred tiny inconsequential fragments of scrap.

“So ends Amazo, finally,” Damian said with a grin. “We make a really great team, don’t we?”

Jon turned to stare at Damian. His expression was nothing short of furious.

“Enough, Damian!” Jon growled. “Stop it. I can’t do this. Not again.” Jon turned away from Damian to look at anything other than the latter’s face, his arms crossed and his eyes shut as if in pain.

“Jon, what do you—“ Damian tried to say. He raised his hand in an attempt to reach Jon’s shoulder, but Jon cut him off.

“I said enough!” Jon repeated, and his voice carried weight. Damian could have sworn the air around Jon rippled outwards in a tiny shockwave. “This mission of yours was too easy, Damian. You could’ve done this yourself. What’s the real reason you called me here?”

“I needed your help…” Damian began, but he stopped when Jon gave him a look that clearly knew he was lying. Damian sighed heavily. “I wanted us to partner up again. I wanted you to feel like we used to when we were still…”

“I can’t do this,” Jon repeated with a hurt tone. “You’re leading me on, Damian. You’re playing with my emotions. You made it perfectly clear you didn’t want anything from me!”

And Damian had. That day, though years past, had etched itself in Jon’s then young mind. He was but a boy that was full to bursting with love he was just aching to share, but the one person in the world he’d wanted to give it to shot him down harder than a bullet to his heart.

_What do you think this is?_ Damian had said back then.

_Don’t taint this with your emotions, Jonathan. Get your head out of the clouds. We’re heroes._

_This is a professional partnership. Act like it._ Damian had sounded so disappointed back then, and his words rang with icy finality.

In the days and weeks that had followed, Jon tried his best to understand why Damian had reacted that way. But young as Jon was, he only ended up blaming himself. He blamed himself for not seeing how nearly every other conversation he’d had with Damian was brutally sarcastic and mean-spirited in some ways. How Damian’s means of appreciation were varying degrees of insults. How even when Damian had claimed they were friends, he only ever said it sparingly and warned Jon not to make a big deal out of it. Jon blamed himself for not recognizing that Damian was just utterly disinterested, and he felt so rotten because, in his mind, he was forcing himself on someone who didn’t want him.

The blame had turned into shame, as Jon saw his affections as something to be embarrassed about, something to be hidden and never talked about. Over time, being with Damian on their patrols had become unbearable, because he felt his affections were synonymous with childish stupidity. He wanted to spare Damian from all of his worries and fears and shame—and it came to pass that he decided Damian was better off without him, and he was better off without Damian. 

Their partnership ended gradually but unremarkably. Jon just turned to his studies, his friends, and his hobbies. He turned up less and less for patrols until he just didn’t anymore. In the years of disuse, the Super Sons headquarters had become an abandoned and forgotten thing, serving little more purpose than an artificial coral reef.

Now, just when he thought he grew out of being that little kid with the red cape and a second-hand jacket, Damian was making him remember just how much he’d loved being a superhero with a friend. That, and how much he’d loved that friend. And worse, how painful it felt to force himself to think that all of his emotions were a mistake.

In as few words as possible, Jon had tried to say all of this to Damian. Amid the ruins of vaguely insectoid robot corpses and sparks of electricity and puffs of acrid smoke, Jon tried his best to remind Damian why they’d stopped talking to each other all those years ago, and that they had both tacitly agreed to go their separate ways.

“I was stupid, Damian. I was a kid, and I was stupid, and I’m sorry. Maybe I’m still stupid right now. But I don’t want any of this anymore. I don’t want to give you my baggage. We both stopped it. Why are you making me go through this?” Jon sounded as pained as he looked. His brows were furrowed and his tone was both demanding and pleading.

“I thought you’d like remembering how we worked as a team,” Damian replied patiently.

“It just reminds me of how badly I wanted something I could never have when I was a kid, and how stupid I was for wanting it,” Jon said bitterly. He turned to leave. “I already made my peace with you, Damian. I’ve learned from the mistake of loving you too early on.”

Damian clenched his fist and inhaled sharply. “I did all of this because I’m sorry for loving you too late!” he almost shouted. Color rushed to his cheeks and his expression was a mixture of frustration and regret.

“What…?” Jon stopped in his tracks.

“We’d stopped talking by then,” Damian continued with grim determination. “But the silence was worse than the most deafening sound in the world. We were always together, and when we weren’t anymore, I felt like I lost an important part of who I was.

“You offered me love but I couldn’t understand why, Jon. I could never consider myself worth that kind of selflessness, or deserve anything that pure. I thought we didn’t need it. I thought _I_ didn’t need it. I thought I was doing us a favor. But when you left, everything just felt…wrong. And all that time when we were still partners, some part of me wanted to thank you, to ask you, maybe even plead with you to just always be… _there_. I just didn’t know how to say it. I never really knew how to talk to you even when we still talked to each other.”

“It’s been years, Damian!” Jon replied angrily. “Why tell me this now?”

“Because it took me years to find the words I needed!” Damian said, the sorrow ringing in his tone. “For half of my life, I was an assassin whose raison d'être was to dominate. For the second half, I was raised to be a hero whose sole purpose is to succeed.

“For most of my life, I’ve divided people into allies and enemies. When I met you, all I knew was that you were neither and that you were more. All I knew was that I felt safer and more complete when you were around. All I knew was that I could stand to smile a little more than usual without feeling guilty when you were beside me. I didn’t have a word for that, Jon. And it took me years contemplating the distance, and silence, and the wedge that drove itself between us for me to realize that I loved you. It took your absence in my life for me to realize you were trying to tell me the same thing.”

“I can’t, Damian…” Jon said after a sober pause, his breath hitching. “I can’t just forget everything that’s happened since then. You can’t just say you love me and expect us to team up again, or even talk again the way we used to. There’s just too much. It hurts too much, and that’s not going away.” He turned to look at Damian again, his bright blue eyes filled with a deep-seated weariness from years of sadness and guilt.

“I know,” Damian said with a miserable smile. “That’s why I orchestrated all of this, gave you some semblance of what we had before…because I wanted to properly say goodbye.” His eyes glistened, and though no tears fell, the lines in his face reflected a heavy sense of loss.

“I love you, Jon. I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.”

Jon blinked a few times as his words left him. He stared at Damian as though seeing him for the first time all over again. Then he looked away.

“I’m sorry, too. Goodbye, Damian.”

* * *

**

“That’ll be $200, please.”

“Thanks, ma’am,” Jon said as he winced. He knew it wasn’t all just his money, but he felt a phantom pain in his pocket nonetheless. He placed the thick book in his backpack and left the counter.

After seeing one of his classmates tearfully calling her mom about not having enough for one of the term’s new required textbooks, Jon and a few of his friends had thought of buying the book and reproducing it for the needier members of their class. Granted, it set Jon back a lot in terms of his stipend, and he wasn’t exactly sure of the legality of photocopying the book, but he was sure that supporting the cause of education and helping people out was a cause his dad would have approved of. Besides, Jon reasoned that his dad wasn’t always that law-abiding either. He was sure his dad’s uniform’s red trunks violated international decency laws.

He was just about to leave the store when a brightly colored book caught his eye. He picked it up from its small wooden pedestal in the ‘recommended for kids’ section. He grinned in surprise to find that it was a book about his and Damian’s adventures, made into a children’s book.

“The Super Sons: Even Kids Can Be Heroes, volume 3,” Jon read out loud. The cover prominently showed Damian as Robin when he was thirteen, and Jon as Superboy when he was just ten. Damian was swinging off to the right using his grapnel, and Jon was running on the rooftop just below him. It seemed like a paparazzi photo taken in secret, and Jon could have sworn he remembered the exact circumstance of when that picture was taken.

_We’d just stopped an armed robbery on a Whole Foods. One guy tried to shoot the old lady cashier to distract us and let his gang get away, but I stopped the bullet,_ Jon thought to himself. He flipped through the book to find more pictures, and even artistic portraits of him and Damian in their uniforms. There were stories of their exploits written in a way to impress young readers and encourage them to emulate the bravery and values of the Super Sons.

“Huh, I don’t remember it happening quite like that…and I’m pretty sure this was supposed to be Kraklow,” Jon said to himself in amusement as he skimmed through a story detailing how they’d once defeated an extra-dimensional wizard by summoning the magic power of an ancient castle to give themselves strength.

Jon paused, the book open in his hands for a good two minutes as he stared off into nothing at all. He hadn’t thought of Damian in weeks, ever since the amazo incident at the factory, and now he found that he could call to mind that handsome face and those piercing green eyes without flinching. All of a sudden, his memories of his time with Damian during their run as the state’s most famous kid hero duo flooded him with all the torrential force of a burst dam.

_Damian…Damian would have been amused to no end if he saw this,_ Jon thought. To his surprise, remembering Damian, and their adventures, and their time together…actually felt _wonderful_. Exciting, even. Jon remembered that time they had to save their moms from each other, that time their sleepover was interrupted by an international syndicate of animal poachers, that time they drove away what was possibly a rabid alien saber-tooth lion…and Jon _laughed._

If only only he'd known before what Damian was thinking...what Damian had wanted to say had he known how...then Jon could have known that Damian enjoyed all of it too. Enjoyed the time they spent together.

For what felt like the first time in his life, Jon felt like he could reminisce without pain, and remember without regret. All he felt was the exhilaration he’d had as a child and Damian…he started to see in his mind all of the little things that Damian said and did that made him love to be around the older boy so much back then. 

Damian would have sarcastic quips, but Jon always did him better. 

Damian would be overly serious and aloof when talking to the people they rescued, but after he went away Jon would grin and tell them not to take Robin too seriously.

He remembered all the times he’d held Damian’s hand and dragged him off somewhere in giddy excitement, all the times that he’d ruffled Damian’s hair without the threat of dismemberment, and all the times Damian sat beside him without speaking, sympathizing through silence.

Jon felt like his memories could finally breathe, and he could look back clearly with fondness at what should have been the best times of his life. Everything was different because now, Jon could see how Damian had been enjoying himself as much as he did. He _knew_ that Damian, in his own way, was loving every moment just as he did.

“Hey, mister!”

Jon snapped back from his reverie when a curly-haired boy with a Superman shirt and flip-flops tugged at his jacket.

“Wha…what?” Jon said, struggling to find his words.

“You gonna buy that?” The boy asked impatiently. He couldn’t have been more than 12, yet he had the unfaltering confidence to sound like he was challenging Jon.

“I uh, I was just browsing,” Jon stammered.

“Good, give it here,” the boy said. “The lady over there told me they ran out and only had the display on stock, and I’ve been wanting to get the new Super Sons for a whole week! I saved up my allowance on it, I’m probably their biggest fan in all of Metropolis these days! If you bought it, I’ll make sure Robin and Superboy find out you’re stealing things from kids and you’ll be in trouble!”

Jon could only chuckle at the boy’s fervent look. “It’s all yours. The last thing I need is Robin scolding me. Even Superboy wouldn’t want that for his worst enemy.”

“Hey, whattaya know, the old guy actually know how jokes work,” the boy said with a sly grin. Then, with a more serious expression, he asked, “When you were a kid, the Super Sons were still around, right? You ever know much about them?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Jon replied with a knowing smile. “Why?”

“I know they’re older now, and they’re probably doing something else,” the boy asked hesitantly. “They’re not a team anymore…but do you think they’re still friends?” He looked anxious, as if he was hoping for an answer that he knew must have been impossible. 

“Do you want to know a secret?” Jon asked, grinning widely.

“What?”

“It took me a while to find out, but…they were always more than just friends…” Jon said, and he exhaled deeply as if a tight knot in his chest had finally been undone.

The boy’s eyes widened as he pondered on Jon’s words. Jon handed him the book.

“They haven’t been together for a while, and so many things have happened since then. But I know there’s still something between them…something brighter than sunshine. All they need is to see each other’s smiles.” Jon continued, though more to himself than the boy. “I think I’m ready to see the sun again.”

He left the bookstore lost in thought, leaving behind a boy who had no idea his most secret romantic pairing fantasy had just come true.


End file.
